No more PED testing for high school athletes in Illinois

High school athletes in Illinois will no longer be tested for steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs. After eight years, the IHSA is officially ending its PED testing program. The organization did away with most tests three years ago after a state law and funding ended. Read more>>

The Kansas Supreme Court will allow the state’s new school funding law to go into effect while justices decide whether it is constitutional, eliminating the possibility that schools will run out of money at the end of June. The justices will hear oral arguments on the new lawin July. Read more>>

Researchers studying California’s new school funding system wish they could track the huge sums of money the state has sent to struggling students, and analyze what districts spent it on. They can’t because the financial data needed to do so isn’t available. Read more>>

The Chicago Public Schools will pay 6.39 percent—an extraordinary interest rate by short-term lending standards—to borrow $275 million it needs to make a mandatory payment for retiree pensions before a June 30 deadline. It’s yet another sign of the dire financial condition of the nation’s third-largest public school system. Read more>>

Public school teachers voted to ratify the contract between the School District of Philadelphia and Philadelphia Federation of Teachers. The agreement, which would run through Aug. 31, 2020, comes as the teachers have been without a contract for the last four years. Read more>>

A school funding deal announced by leaders in the Legislature this week could play havoc with some district's spending plans. While about 400 districts stand to gain funding from the state, roughly 120 would lose it, forcing cuts or other tough decisions to make up the difference. Read more>>

The state's new school-prayer law creates a legal catch-22 for Florida’s public schools and effectively puts a “Sue me sign” over all of them. If a school follows the letter of the law and allows a prayer, proselytizing message, or one denigrating religion by a student, parent or teacher, there will be a violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. Read more>>

The big issue in voucher programs is whether they foster competition and improve public education. As big an issue, it is becoming clear, is whether the private schools can accept public money without also accepting the attendant demands that will destroy what they are and what they offer. Read more>>

The East Bay Educational Collaborative, an educational organization serving schools in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Hampshire, has partnered with PASCO Scientific to provide training, curriculum materials and equipment for the third year of its Improving the STEM Pipeline project, a grant opportunity funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research. Read more>>

Mirrors & Windows for Passport, an online teaching and learning environment specifically designed for English language arts, has been launched by EMC School. Through the Passport curriculum, teachers will have access to between 120 and 200 fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama and folk literature reading selections and corresponding activities at each grade level from 6 through 12. Read more>>

Follett is intensifying its support of K12 school libraries and librarians by partnering with EveryLibrary, a political action committee dedicated to advocating for libraries and librarians at the state level. The Follett-EveryLibrary partnership will initially focus its work with school library associations in six states: Illinois, Washington, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Florida and Mississippi. Read more>>

The Queen Anne’s County board of education named Andrea Kane as the next superintendent of Queen Anne’s County Public Schools. Kane, currently is the associate superintendent of academic services and the chief academic officer for Richmond Public Schools, will succeed Interim Superintendent Gregory Pilewski. Read more>>

Less than a month after Campbell USD Superintendent Eric Andrew announced his retirement, the California district has already named a successor. The district’s governing board appointed Shelly Viramontez, associate superintendent of human resources, to the district’s top position. She has worked in the district since 1996. Read more>>

For the last 15 months, the Hamilton County board has been divided on whether an outsider or Interim Superintendent Kirk Kelly should be named to the permanent post. The board ended up choosing Tennessee educator Bryan Johnson, who is the chief academic officer for Clarksville-Montgomery County Schools, as the next superintendent. Read more>>